About Us
AKA Bird Nerd is a project of David Dilworth and Shawn Weigelt, amateur bird photographers. David started the blog in February 2008, and Shawn came on board shortly after – in May.
David is a retired teacher. Shawn is married to David’s daughter, and this whole thing is all his fault. On July 13, 2006, Shawn successfully converted David to becoming an official bird nerd. David started taking bird photos in 2006, using a Nikon Fieldscope with an attached Nikon P4 point and shoot camera. Shawn moved from avid birder to avid bird photographer in 2008. David had picked up a Nikon D80 and Tamron 200-500 zoom lens and just recently moved to a Nikon D7000 with a Tamron 70-300 image stabilized zoom. Shawn uses a Nikon D80 with a Nikon 70-300 VR zoom.
We have no illusions of being professional nature photographers, but we both strive to take the best photos possible to share on the blog. We sometimes post poor photos just for documentation sake or to get feedback concerning identification. We use Photoshop CS5 to process our photos, but generally limit our changes to cropping, sharpening, lighting and color enhancements. Our goal is to make the photo as close to the actual environmental situation as possible.
We reserve the right to post non-bird photos whenever the spirit moves us. We both like to take a variety of nature photos, but primarily take bird photos.
David has two other blog/websites:
Nibble University
A K-6 educational website with activities in a variety of subjects. It was established in 1999.
Keep Santa Cruz Weird
My wife and I are now living in my childhood town, Santa Cruz, California, half of the year. It is a great little resort town on Monterrey Bay, and has quite a reputation for having a VERY wide variety of unique citizens. Surfing is big there, so many of the photos are of surfers. I just try to take photos that are interesting. It was established in the Fall of 2011.
Use the form below to contact us.